


Those Marks Are Untold Stories

by evening_spirit



Category: The Gifted (TV 2017)
Genre: F/M, Implied/Referenced Self-Harm, Past Drug Addiction, and she's also scared of what loving him might entail, but john isn't hiding what's troubling him, clarice is worried about john, kind of, so they will work it out, what i want to see on the show
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-05
Updated: 2018-10-05
Packaged: 2019-07-25 13:23:11
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,230
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16198385
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/evening_spirit/pseuds/evening_spirit
Summary: John returns home after his night escapade to assault a truck and he doesn’t quite know what to do about it, so he sets to prepare Clarice a breakfast. Coda to 2x02. Clarice's POV





	Those Marks Are Untold Stories

_At the old Underground HQ Denise is preparing eggs and bacon. Clarice enters the kitchen to greet her and she sees Nora’s already in, laughing and teasing with Tom and Jenna, what is strange, because Tom and Jenna are older than Clarice, so they should be adults now. She looks in the mirror and realizes she has no markings yet. She’s a teenager too. Well, obviously, since Denise is making breakfast. Bacon smells like summer and woods and she can’t imagine ever wanting to leave this place. This is her home, with Denise and Nora, with John and the others. He’s in there too, just now cracks the eggs and puts them on the sizzling pan._

_“Mmmm,” Clarice mutters, “smells great.”_

_“Hey, you’re up already?” he calls from the kitchen. “I was trying to make it a surprise.” He stirs deftly, then turns the pan to put the eggs on the plates._

_Clarice blinks_ and looks around _._ Right. They are at their little lovely crappy apartment. Denise at the HQ was a dream. A nice dream.

She sits up on the bed, cranes her neck left and right. The food smells really good, no wonder it prompted the dream.

“I’m putting on coffee, you may come whenever you’re ready,” John announces.

Clarice is hungry, so she doesn't waste time. She goes for a quick morning toilet and joins John at the table.

Breakfast not only smells great, it looks lovely too. Plates are arranged, one with eggs and bacon, the other with fresh rolls, orange juice waits in a glass and a lone rose smiles at her from another glass, in the middle of the table.

“What’s gotten into you?” John sometimes makes breakfast, sometimes she does, but they usually eat in a hurry as it is. They maybe put that much effort into a meal on one of their first days in DC, to celebrate relative quiet and finally having some privacy. But this?

“What, I can’t even make you a good breakfast?” John asks in a light tone, but there is an edge to his voice that makes Clarice’s heart slow down.

Wait a minute, a gift, a flower? Sometimes men do things like this out of guilt and he seemed off last night, vaguely. So something did happen with Evangeline, something he feels he needs to apologize for, maybe? Something he lied about and damn, Clarice won’t let him get away with it on eggs and bacon. She’s going to make him talk, even if it makes her hurt, even if this dream life, this little bubble they created for themselves, will burst as a result. She knew it would happen one day. She told herself she’d enjoy it while it lasted, but now that it’s about to be over, she is prepared. Whatever it is that’s going to ruin this bliss, she’s ready to take it head on.

And then she sees it.

John puts two mugs of coffee, one black, one with cream, on the table, then leans one hand on the edge as he sits down. He doesn’t even try to hide.

“Dig in,” he says, as he grabs his fork and his knife.

Clarice glares at his hands.

His fingers look roughed up, his knuckles bloodshot, skin broken in a few places. The scratches are fresh.

“What is this?” she hears herself whisper, her heart plummeting to the bottom of her gut.

“What is--” John starts to repeat the question, then pauses, looks at his hands like he hadn’t seen them before. “Oh. Yeah.” He puts the fork and the knife away, like he’s not hungry anymore and when Clarice looks up at his face he seems, for a blink of an eye, like he’s about to vomit. He opens and closes his mouth, avoids her gaze.

“John?” she prodds and he casts her a sharp glance.

“I’m not slipping up if that’s--” he says very fast, then stops abruptly, then adds, “--that’s what you’re worried about.”

“I’m not. I mean I am but I’m not accusing--” Clarice doesn’t know what to say and she feels her face burn up, the insides of her palms itch, same as when she’s about to open a portal. That’s right, she doesn’t want to be here.

But John says, “I know,” and he looks so lost she knows she has to endure this somehow. Whatever it is. Just a moment ago, when she thought about that allegedly complicated relationship between John and Evangeline, she was ready to face him, even force the confession out of him, if necessary. This is not about that though. It is about his twisted ways of handling pain and about his addiction and that-- That she’s not prepared to deal with. Not that soon after first finding out. What did he do to break his bulletproof skin like this? How hard did he have to hit… whatever it was he was hitting?

“I’m just--” John starts and pauses again, then continues after a bit. “I couldn’t sleep. See, Evangeline told me--” another pause, “a few things and--” another “I couldn’t sleep so I went for a run and this-- just happened. But it was only this once, I promise and I’m telling you now, so--” he stutters and halts and hesitates and it’s painful to listen to him confess like this, but Clarice has no idea what to say and her hands still itch, even more now. She has to grip the sides of the chair to stop herself from portalling the hell out of here. John doesn’t seem to realize. “I’m not trying to hide it, or pretend like--” he keeps stuttering, faster now. “I mean I know I did, yesterday, I lied that everything was okay, but I’m telling you now, because I don’t want-- I want you to trust me. Want you to be able to trust me, please say something.”

He closes his eyes and just sits there, his both hands on the table, their backs up, a silent evidence of the night’s events.

This is some kind of bad dream. Clarice wills herself to wake up, but it doesn’t happen, so she figures she’s going to have to take that strength she thought she felt at the prospect of John betraying her with another woman, and apply it to this situation. At least their bubble is not broken, they are still in in and they are still together, so together they are going to face this obstacle, like any other couples do.

“I trust you,” Clarice tries and she’s surprised her voice doesn’t shake. It sounds sincere. She is surprised she actually does feel that way. She trusts. She pries one hand away from the chair and the itch is only an echo; she puts it over his roughed, bruised skin. “I am here for you.”

“I know,” John mouths, blinks, stares at her hand. “I know,” he repeats louder, lifts his hand and laces their fingers together. “You are,” he makes it sound like a certainty.

Clarice isn’t sure she deserves it. His faith in her. She isn’t sure she has what it takes to really be there for him if things really do get bad. Because now? He’s not there yet, is he? He just had a bad day, a bad night, he’s not -- what did he say? -- he’s not slipping up. But what’s gonna happen if he does?

She has no choice now. She has to rise to the occasion. When John told her yesterday about his addiction to both, pain and painkillers, she wasn’t sure what to make of it. She didn’t really know what it entailed -- she still doesn’t. But then, maybe he does? He had been through it, after all, so she just has to take her cue from him.

What does his behavior tell her right now? He wants her to know. He is completely open, at least he wants to be. That means he doesn’t want to give in to the temptation, but he’s afraid he can’t do it on his own. He believes that she wants to be there for him and in that he is right. But he also believes she is strong enough and of that Clarice is not so sure.

She squeezes his hand back and whispers, “I am,” more to reassure herself, than him.

Then, “Let’s eat, before it gets cold,” she offers and John nods, takes his hands away from hers with a deep sigh.

But neither of them can really eat. Clarice’s stomach is in knots both with fear that she will somehow fail in this mission to care for the man she loves, and with esteem for John’s inner strength. It is admirable that he confessed his troubled past to her. Of course they’ve been together for a while now, so it’s natural that he trusts her, but still. He must have suspected something might go wrong with Evangeline, and then something she said or did, or just her presence alone must have triggered something in John and his fears did come true.

He said she told him something, Clarice remembers and all that pent up energy inside her errupts with a deep hate for the woman. She puts her knife down.

“What did she say?” she shoots the question out of her mouth before she has a chance to think about it. “Evangeline, what did she tell you?”

John only winces. He stays silent for a long while, mouths words that remain silent and keeps avoiding Clarice’s eyes. She’s almost ready to urge him to speak, when he takes a deep breath.

“She said that--” he starts and begins to stutter again. Well-s and um-s for a minute and finally blurts out, “About Reeva Page, she told us about Reeva Page and that she’s dangerous, one of the most powerful mutants still standing after Seven-Fifteen. That we cannot defeat her.”

Really? That was what got him so twisted up? Impossible. He should have more faith in their group than that.

“Has she met us?” Clarice asks. “Evangeline I mean.”

“Reeva is really, really powerful. And ruthless.”

“We will fight her, you know that.”

“She won’t let them go,” John stresses. “Andy and Lorna, Reeva Page won’t let them go, she’d rather kill them than let them go.” He sits up, straight as a pole and the pain in his face tears through Clarice’s heart. “And if they stay at her side,” he adds, his voice faltering, “then we might have to--”

“No!”

“We will have to!”

He stands up, turns his back to Clarice and hugs himself, hiding his hands under his armpits.

Does he really believe that? Clarice turns the thought inside her head and all she comes up with is that John has really lost faith in them, in his friends, that he really doesn’t believe there is any chance to fix this.

But Clarice believes and if she has to, she will believe for the both of them.

She stands up and comes closer to John, puts her hand on his back, forces him to turn to her, as she speaks.

“It won’t happen. We won’t let that happen. Can you imagine Marcos letting anything bad happen to Lorna? Or the Struckers letting Andy get killed. No. There’s no way."

“I know,” John sobs. “Which is why I’ll have to.” He lowers his face and Clarice can see it’s wet from tears. “I haven’t even told them that, you know. About what Evangeline said. She’d said that to me, alone, and I haven’t told them.”

“Oh, John.” Clarice takes his face in both her hands. No wonder he’s so broken, if that’s the only future he can see.

But it is not going to happen, no way. Not as long as Clarice is standing.

“You will kill no one, you hear me?” She puts all of her conviction into those words. “Look at me, John, look at me. Good. I won’t let you kill any of our friends, no way. And I know you do not believe it right now, but just know that I believe. I believe for the both of us, so you can just trust in that, okay? I believe that we will find the way out of all this. We don’t even know what they are planning, but once we do -- we will figure out how to stop Reeva Page and save Andy and Lorna at the same time. We have to have hope, John, and I do. I. Do. You just have to believe in me and that will be enough.”

She keeps talking and repeating herself and talking some more until he calms down, wipes his face and gives her a hug. And if it is a tad too tight -- she has trouble breathing for a moment there -- she wills herself to endure that too.

They are a couple. When two people are together, sometimes everything is great and happy and tender, but sometimes one of them loses their strength and needs to lean on the other. That’s just the way it is and Clarice will bear the burden for as long as John needs her to, because she knows very well, that if things were the other way around, if she got weak and scared, he would carry the world on his shoulders for her just the same.

#

.end


End file.
